Software RAID is the buzz that everyone seems to be discussing and wishing for. I think that the primary reason for it is excellent marketing, low hardware pricing and a heafty dose of user inexperience.
- How many of those discussing software RAID have actually used it in a production environment?
- Out of those how many have actually recovered and successfully rebuilt their software RAID from a failed drive without data loss?
Anyone that has actually gone through the exercise will be the first to tell you that the process is not for the faint of heart. The fact of the matter is that software RAID solutions are best implemented when they target certain hardware configurations (vendor-specific solutions), are administered via a GUI of some sort and are generally built and configured with a good handle on the hardware involved. For example, using IDE disks on the same cable in the same array is a NO-NO. Mixing technologies in an array such as USB and SATA drives is a NO-NO, Using multiple USB disks on the same hub on the same array is a NO-NO. The point being that there is a fair amount of understanding that is required to intelligently design, build and operate a software RAID system, especially with older hardware. Even then the technology is touchy at best.
I realize that one of the primary goals behind NASLite is to provide a low-cost solution. We at Server Elements take a lot of pride in being able to provide such a solution, but not in exchange for stability or data integrity. That said, our decision to support only hardware RAID was pretty easy to reach. We figured that if your data is important enough to warrant RAID, then the $150 for a hardware RAID card should not be a point of debate but a must.
Anyway, those are my personal thoughts on the software RAID issue. I know many of you will probably disagree with the above, but my experience with software RAID has been a mixed bag and that is not a good thing.
One of the jokes around here is that people run NASLite on things we’ve never heard of before. It would be very difficult to implement stable support for software RAID on on hardware we’ve never heard of before.